But the difficulty with me is how this amphibius mus came
to fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. Was it
determined in its choice of that place by the mere accident of
finding the potatoes which were planted there; or is it the constant
practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of the
water in the colder months?
Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how
fallacious it is with respect to natural history; yet, in the following
instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce
towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned
before, with respect to the invariable early retreat of the hirundo
apus, or swift, so many weeks before its congeners; and that not
only with us, but also in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire
about the beginning of August.
The great large bat* (which by the by is at present a nondescript in
England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires
and migrates very early in the summer: it also ranges very high for
its food, feeding in a different region of the air; and that is the
reason I never could procure one.
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